


Enigma

by sunsetmog



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-13
Updated: 2005-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elijah was an enigma; as much to himself as to anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enigma

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://sunsetmog-fics.livejournal.com/19855.html) in April 2005

Elijah was unlucky enough to be trapped in a body that was both way too old for him, yet at the same time served only to constrain his youth. He was all limbs and elbows and jerking movements at the exact same time as being weary and experienced and professional and adult to the core. Elijah was one of those people who baffled even the most stringent and dedicated of observers. 

Elijah was an enigma; as much to himself as to anyone else. 

And that fact bothered him more than all the rest put together.

But that wasn't to say that Elijah spent all his time contemplating the two polar opposites of his personality. Days, weeks, - months, even, if he really put his mind to it—slipped by where Elijah didn't even stop to contemplate the frayed edges of his existence and contrast them with everyone else's neatly edged seams. 

But here, after shooting had finished and he'd watched his best friends stretch the elasticity of their friendship to the very extremes of the human emotion, Elijah couldn't help but think about himself. He'd watched Dom self destruct with his desperate, clamouring, terrible desire to be famous; Sean acting on all those subliminal urges to secure the perfect life for his kids—the one he could never be guaranteed growing up—and he heard from Billy now and again, messages which sounded happy and carefree and as if Billy was finally getting to play the sort of involved role that appealed to his artistic tendencies. So why did Elijah think they were all beginning to lose it? 

Elijah shook his head and began the age old search through his trouser pockets and his rucksack for his cigarettes. He was sat on the windowsill, his head stuck out of the open window, his hands beginning to shake as he searched the very depths of his rucksack pockets for his cigarettes. When he'd been growing up, he never imagined that being an adult was going to be like this—an _addict_ —although if he'd thought long and hard about it he probably could have guessed. He had **that** sort of personality. If it hadn't been this habit—the cigarettes—it would have been another one. At least this was legal, if frowned on in eating establishments. Leaning over, he found the remains of a packet of cigarettes in the bottom of his jacket pocket, with one lonesome, slightly bent cigarette crushed in the bottom. He hastily tried to smooth it out with one (slightly shaking) hand, and tried not to notice the fingernails bitten down to the quick. 

Habit forming personality indeed. 

He wondered at which point his life had stopped making sense; at which point he'd lost that key to reality, the one that grounded him, that told him who he was, and that all of this **celebrity** mattered nothing. 

Elijah didn't hear Viggo come up beside him, he didn't hear the soft pad of footfalls on the carpet. He just felt Viggo's hand rest gently—briefly - against his neck before he reached out and plucked the burning cigarette from between Elijah's fingers. 

(Elijah wasn't shaking any more, not since he started holding the cigarette, and he wondered haphazardly if holding a cocktail stick or a pencil would have the same effect, and resolved to try it out sometime). 

Viggo took a long drag from the cigarette, before handing it back, his fingers hot against Elijah's skin. Elijah's whole body was focused on the touch, his skin prickling and burning under Viggo's still fingers. The chill in the air had dissipated, and Elijah felt warm. Viggo exhaled on to the early evening air, and watched the smoke drift away on the breeze. 

"Bright sky tonight," he said, after a minute. His fingers tapped a drumbeat against the windowpane. 

Elijah drew on the cigarette with a shaky intake of breath, and stared out of the window. The view was great, certainly, out across the LA valley, but the haze on the horizon spoke more of pollution than beauty. His fingers curled around the pocket of his jeans. The denim was rough against his fingers, and the pad of his thumb rubbed the rivet gently, the metal cold. "Why do you even stay here, Vig?" he said eventually. He could taste the nicotine, _feel_ it, and he relaxed against the wall. "You don't seem like an LA type of guy."

"You stay here," Viggo reached for the cigarette, his eyes shutting briefly as his lips closed around the filter. His eyelashes rested momentarily against his cheek and Elijah swallowed softly as Viggo continued, "and you no more buy into this shit than I do."

"Maybe I just like palm trees." Elijah said eventually. His gaze flitted between Viggo and the horizon. His feet were bare, and he rubbed his toes against the soft wood floor. 

Viggo shrugged, and handed the cigarette back. He didn't meet Elijah's eyes; staring out into the back yard. "Maybe I do too." 

Elijah laughed softly, his face twisting upwards to meet Viggo's. "You no more like palm trees than you like Bill Gates."

"Yet there's a use for them both in this world," Viggo said softly. He smiled, gently, and he touched his palm briefly to the top of Elijah's head. "There's a use for us all in this world, Elijah. Even if you can't see it at the moment." 

Elijah didn't hear him move away, didn't hear him pad out of the room as quietly as he'd come in. Elijah went back to staring out of the window across the valley, tasting the cloves against his tongue. As the cigarette burnt down against his fingers, he stubbed it out in an overflowing clay dish, sighing slowly. The sun had begun to set. 

He paused for a moment at the bedroom door. Viggo was dozing, head resting in the dip between the pillows, his feet hanging over the side of the bed. He opened one eye at the sound of Elijah unbuttoning his jeans, lifting one arm and beckoning Elijah closer, patting the indent in the sheets already left by Elijah's pale frame. Elijah smiled, stepped out of his jeans and slipped under the sheets beside Viggo. 

Elijah was an enigma; as much to himself as to anyone else, but as Viggo pressed his mouth to the sensitive skin beneath Elijah's ear, Elijah began to think that it really didn't matter.


End file.
